encounters with future students and stone fruits

This morning I slept through the one thing I've been waiting for since I moved to Michigan: the rain. Listen, it is gorgeous here. The weather is much more like a Buffalo summer, breezy and so less humid. It could the giant wang-shaped lake that's thirty miles to the west, or it could just be that this is a particularly nice August.

But I've had weeks of enjoying the weather, to sit outside on the deck with a stack of textbooks and legal pads, and all I wanted last night was for a giant storm to roll through today. Something big and gray. Something that would keep me inside, possibly watching Law and Orders or reading the news online with a cup of coffee in hand and listening to the latest Conor Oberst and mixes that the B sent me. I wanted an excuse to be inside working and not feel guilty about holing up with the last vestiges of prep work, and this morning I got it. It rained. Stormed, almost.

And I slept right through it. When I finally woke up--at eleven thirty, four hours after the alarm had first sounded and three hours after it shut itself off--it was wet out, but it was also starting to heat up. I knew that it was going to be a gross day, much more like late August in south central Minnesota.

Pretty much.

I went straight to the office to tackle the last remaining pre-teaching tasks. I had syllabi to get printed, Blackboard sites to set up, an ugly-chic amber lamp for a corner of my office. And then the little things--you know, the tiny little things that do not matter at all--started to get to me: I couldn't find any tape refills, the guy who had my office before me had disconnected all the fluorescent tubes in my overhead light (this is actually not surprising, given that I have also been told that he was "a little dark" and kept a collection of mounted stuffed ravens on the bookshelves), I forgot to bring an extension cord, I couldn't get Excel to draw a little office-hours table that looked exactly as I wanted it. Finally I took a big break in the middle of the afternoon to go find my classrooms.

The campus was crawling with students. Convocation had concluded, and all over the campus the sidewalks were filled with people. Students walking around with their parents. Students in blue shirts leading big groups of new students on tours. Students holding gray university bookstore bags. Students clutching lanyards and shiny new G-cards. Students asking questions about the meal plans. It was the first time I've seen this campus really busy. It was the sight of all of these students that made me realize that wow, this is really happening. I have this job, this job that I have wanted for the last seven years, and all those kids walking by me? The ones in horrible madras Hollister shorts? Starting Tuesday, they're sitting in my classes.

Right then, I started to feel just like I did my first week teaching at Minnesota: excited, yes, but also nervous. Like I am sitting the front car ascending that first big hill of a roller coaster, and I am belted into the little car and we are going up up up into the sky. And searching for my classrooms--all six of them--didn't help much. I had to constantly reference my little map, the one that I drew blue ink stars on reminding me of what buildings I'm in at what times on what days, and I sweated my way across the muggy campus with the little blue ink stars bleeding all over my hands.

The first building I set out for was the furthest from my office, nearly a mile. And because I was already feeling astoundingly positive about the upcoming semester, this made me worry about the shoes I'll have to wear in the winter, if I will turn into one of those professors who wears practical walkin' boots across campus and then changes in the bathroom before class starts. Or worse, who after a few semesters quits changing back into attractive shoes and just starts wearing the boots everywhere. With dress pants.

I didn't feel much better when I found that first classroom. The schedule hanging next to the lab, if it is to be believed, has a French class scheduled for the time that I'm supposed to be in there. There were two freshmen guys hanging around the door when I walked up, my bangs pasted to my head courtesy of the humidity, and I overheard enough of their discussion to learn that they were my future students. I was about to turn and quietly retreat when they spotted me and my map in hand.

Hey, is this A1121?

It looks like it, I said.

That's what we thought. But our class isn't listed here. Is yours?

No, I said. It was an honest answer.

Huh, they said. Well, who knows. I guess we'll come back on Tuesday and see if WRT150 is here after all.
I'm looking forward to seeing if they recognize that the sweating, disheveled chick they talked to in the hall on Friday is actually the teacher. This is why I was so relieved when Jeano texted me today with TODAY IS A PANIC DAY. Because I know exactly what she means.

Anyway. I sort of feel that I want the weekend to just be over already, and I also know that I need it, particularly because after my tour of campus I didn't go back to the office and finish my planning. Instead, I drove home, and on the way I stopped and bought six dollars' worth of little yellow plums and white peaches from the roadside stand.



I figure that I can use the distraction of figuring out what to do with three pounds of stone fruit this weekend--a nice break from worrying about Blackboard issues, and what happens if I show up on Tuesday morning in my new red shoes to find a class full of beret-wearing French students in my computer lab, and reminding myself that yes, I can do this, and yes, pretty soon this is all going to feel beyond normal. Awesome, even. I will repeat I can do this! as I eat plums and make a big peach tart. I will repeat it as I put the final touches on the first two weeks of lesson plans. I will say it aloud to myself as I iron my skirts and make sure that I have enough index cards for the first day.

And if that fails, I can always cut all this fruit up and make a giant batch of sangria. Which come to think of it isn't such a bad idea either. Jeano, perhaps I will send you a Thermos.